


in another life

by orphan_account



Series: drabbles [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 21:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18786730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: (a prince fell in love with a boy).





	in another life

Keith knows this is a bad idea. A terrible, horrible, extremely inauspicious idea. It would’ve been better if he had stayed in his room, slept or read a book or went through the mountain of reports he has yet to answer.

Keith also knows that he would’ve lost his sanity if he had stayed put.

It’s nighttime when he arrives at a small farm, and with clouds blocking the moonlight, the whole place is drowning in darkness. Everything is eerily quiet, save for the occasional noises the animals make.

He hops down from his horse, ropes her securely on a tree and stalks his way towards the stable—there is no light coming from the house, and Keith doubts Lance would’ve been able to sleep after everything that has happened last week; he himself has a hard time falling asleep with the guilt stabbing him deep in his chest.

He slowly peeks in, his movements careful not to cause any noise, and Keith exhales with relief as his eyes catch the orange glints of light, followed by the shadow of a specific lanky form. But relief is swept away quickly, something heavy and unpleasant taking its place.

Keith sees the top of Lance’s head as he walks closer, his brown curls disheveled into a messy puff—he wants to brush them neatly, feel the locks sliding between his fingers just once more.

He expects Lance to be angry at him for coming, expects him to explode into insults or, maybe, completely close off and not say a single word. Expects his face to go red or his eyes to fill up with tears or his teeth to grit with such force it’ll be audible throughout the entire stable.

He doesn’t, however, expect Lance’s eyes—blue and beautiful and deep—to fill up with dreadful fear that cuts right through Keith’s chest, opening up a new wound that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

Lance looks around, eyes wide with cold terror as he searches for a potential threat; Keith hates it, hates that it’s associated with his presence. 

“What are you doing here?” Lance whispers, but his words echo loudly in Keith’s ears, the lick of woe in his voice awakens the sudden realization that Keith, in fact, should have stayed in his castle, should have left Lance alone in peace and more importantly, in safety.

But he couldn’t, he had to come, he had to see Lance. Keith has to make sure they will be okay.

“I—” Keith blurts, too taken aback to search for the right words. He blinks the shock away, shakes his head because  _ they can fix this, this is Lance and they can work it out. _ “I came to see you.”

“I can see that,” Lance hisses, his words like acid, burning a new scar on Keith’s skin. “ _ Why _ are you here, Your Highness?”

“Don’t call me that, Lance,” Keith pleas, his chest tightening, cold sweat running down his spine.

Lance’s face is as pained as Keith has ever seen it be, holding back something so broken and vulnerable it makes Keith’s heart ache, makes him wish to put the pieces back together and make sure they never fall apart.

“You’re a prince, I am required to call you that,” Lance says, coldly. He crosses his arms over his chest, but it’s more like a self-hug than an angry gesture. Keith’s hands twitch, the urge to unfold those arms and curl his own around the boy almost painfully unbearable.

He takes one step closer to him and when Lance doesn’t jerk away, he takes another. Lance’s eyes are staring stubbornly on his own feet, an angry little crease in-between his brows. Keith notices one of his eyebrows shake as if Lance is barely able to keep his composure, barely able to hold the tears back; his heart drops and, for the first time since they’ve met, he thinks it was a mistake to ever notice Lance among the crowd.

“I had to see you, Lance, I—please, look at me,” he says quietly, as softly as he can so Lance won’t push him away completely. Lance doesn’t and when Keith lifts a hand and cups his cheek, Lance jerks his head away.

“Did you not see what they did to Raquel?!”

His voice is like thunder, screaming in Keith’s head and freezing him into one place. Lance looks up now, but Keith wishes he hadn’t, he wishes the fire in his gaze was from anything else but fury and resentment.

Keith presses his lips into a tight line, the guilt eating him alive. He should turn around and leave, it’s the right thing to do and he knows it. But Keith can’t, for the life of him, make his feet move. It’s like they’re pinned on the ground, pinned there wherever Lance is, eager to be close with him.

“I couldn’t even recognize her until I saw her necklace,” Lance continues, his face twisting with regret and his eyes slowly getting watery with angry tears. “I—she— _ God, _ Keith, she could’ve died and it would have been on me, don’t you understand?”

Lance chokes a single sob, so broken and so small that Keith can’t help but step closer, the need to protect Lance from whatever is hurting him almost consumes all of his senses. But his step freezes mid-air at the next words Lance whispers:

“Just leave, please.”

Keith’s blood goes cold, running through his veins line icy spikes and tearing his flesh from the inside.

They’ve had fought before, his title had created a number of problems for them before, and Lance had screamed at him, and Keith had screamed back, but never, not once during those times had Lance asked him to—to go. To leave him.

Keith’s hands are shaky when he reaches for Lance’s shoulder, his eyes are wide with panic and plea when he locks his gaze with the other’s.

“Lance, we can—we can work this out,” he begins, swallowing once when his voice is nothing more than broken notes and shattered words. Lance drops his head, but he doesn’t remove Keith’s hand from his shoulder. “Listen, I will make sure no one even dares to look at your family—”

“And do you want that?” Lance cuts in, frowning at the ground. “Constantly watching over our backs, putting our…  _ my  _ family in danger,” he scoffs, it’s an ugly sound that’s entirely unlike Lance, unlike his usual laughter—so light and melodic and reviving. Keith wishes never to hear it again.

Keith blinks, his jaw working, searching for the right words.

“I want to be with you,” he settles, gripping Lance’s shoulder a little tighter. “And I’m ready to face anything for that.”

This time, Lance looks up. His eyes are freshly wet with new tears, his mouth is dropped into a wobbly frown. Keith hates it, hates each line of distress on Lance’s face, each drop of tear on his cheek. He lifts a hand and wipes his thumb over the wet lines on his cheekbone.

“This— _ us _ is not welcomed, Keith. It’s forbidden and… I can’t,” Lance whispers, shaking his head; his words burn like hot iron on Keith’s skin. “I can’t let what happened to Raquel repeat again.”

Keith has felt like he’s lost three times in his life: when his mother went missing without leaving a trail behind, taking a part of his soul with her and creating an empty hole inside Keith’s chest that he’ll never be able to fill up; when his father died inside the burning castle, unable to make it out in time; and now, when Lance is refusing his love, asking him to leave.

He feels like he’s six again, asking his father why had mother left, asking what he could do to get her back. He feels twelve again, clutching his brother's arms as he cries against his chest, mourning yet another loss of a parent, burning with the painful truth that he’s helpless to do anything but accept.

His fingers twitch from desperation, from restlessness to do something, to keep his world from falling apart. Keith senses the last bits of hope slowly slip through his fingers.

“Lance, I won’t let that happen again,” he says, and maybe his voice hitches from apprehension, or maybe it’s from the thick lump forming inside his throat. He frames Lance’s face with both if his hands, helplessly brushing his thumb over the damp skin.

Lance shakes his head, closing his eyes, and a part of Keith dies at the sight of broken tears running down his face. He feels selfish. Horribly, entirely selfish for asking Lance to stay, to not leave him. And he hates himself for that, hates that he’s weak and afraid of being left alone again, hates that he’s not strong enough to put Lance’s safety and happiness above his own.

“I love you,” Keith whispers, his voice raw and his words desperate like a prayer that will never be heard. Lance sobs louder. “Please, I love you, little star, don’t… don’t leave me.”

He moves closer, leaning his forehead with Lance’s. Keith’s eyes start burning when the warmth of Lance’s breath fans over his face—but it doesn’t set fire to his skin, doesn’t prickle his arms with goosebumps and doesn’t turn his chest into a fluttering mess like it has always done.

Instead, Keith feels colder than ever. Instead, his hands start shaking and his breath turns rapid and his chest becomes heavy with despair and loss and something as painful as an open wound.

Lance wraps his fingers around Keith’s wrists, his grip strong and bruising, as if an attempt to ground himself, to not break down completely.

“I love you, too,” he says, his words an added salt to Keith’s bleeding heart. Because they’re nothing more than a goodbye, nothing more than a curse Keith will never break from. “I love you, but I can’t let my love become a threat to my family.”

He removes Keith’s hands from his face, pulls away with a despondent blue inside his eyes—Keith wishes to see them as bright as the first time he had kissed him, to see the ocean inside them as deep as the first time Keith had noticed how beautiful and unique Lance’s eyes were.

“Lance,” he croaks. “Please.”

“Maybe, in a different life,” Lance whispers this instead of the words Keith would give his life for him to say. 

Keith swears his heart stops beating and his mind stops working when Lance steps back and disappears behind a wall, leaving him alone with ice running in his veins and fire breathing down his lungs.

This, Keith thinks, is what dying with death not being the last result feels like. And it hurts like no broken bone or ripped flesh will ever hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! tell me what you thought about this story :3
> 
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://yourfriendlyneighborsam.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/frendlysam) or [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/friendlyneighborsam/) (i post tiny drabbles on ig)


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